National Political News

If the Senate doesn't pass a bill to cut global warming, Democrat Barbara Boxer says there will be dire results: droughts, floods, fires, loss of species, damage to agriculture, worsening air pollution and more.

WASHINGTON – House Democrats were working Thursday to avert a showdown with President Barack Obama and the CIA over who in Congress should receive sensitive information on the agency's covert activities.

California's IOUs were declared investment securities by the U.S. government Thursday, bringing some order to a potentially chaotic market.

Amid the great debates of the day over health care, global warming and economic recovery, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday there will be no pause in the action to honor Michael Jackson.

L'AQUILA, Italy – First lady Michelle Obama and other spouses of G-8 summit leaders on Thursday found themselves touring with a former topless model-turned-government minister filling in as the official hostess for the Italian prime minister's soon-to-be ex-wife.

Fed up with what they contend are unfair and excessive credit card fees, more than 40 local 7-Eleven owners are among thousands of store owners nationwide who are calling on Congress to rein in the costs.

BAGHDAD – Mass bombings continued for a second day Thursday throughout Iraq, killing dozens of people and wounding more than 130 in at least three cities, one week after the U.S. military withdrew combat forces from Iraq's major cities.

L'AQUILA, Italy – President Barack Obama and leaders of seven other economic powers agreed Wednesday to broad goals for reducing global warming, but they stopped well short of measures that environmentalists call critical to stopping the problem and also failed to get developing nations such as China and India to go along.

BAGHDAD – Just as Americans and Iraqis began to congratulate themselves on a relatively quiet week since U.S. combat troops withdrew from Iraq's major cities, insurgents Wednesday set off six bombs in Mosul, the biggest city in northern Iraq, killing 14 and wounding 44.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – The United States conducted two drone missile strikes in Pakistan's South Waziristan region Wednesday, killing at least 45 people, in the latest example of expanded direct American support for Pakistan's military offensive against key Pakistani insurgent leaders.

WASHINGTON – The nation's lawyers and law enforcement leaders gave Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor ringing endorsements Tuesday, even as Republicans tried to rally opposition.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban fighters and their commanders have escaped the Marines' big offensive in Afghanistan's Helmand province and moved into areas to the west and north, prompting fears that the U.S. effort has just moved the Taliban problem elsewhere, Afghan defense officials have told McClatchy Newspapers.

WASHINGTON – Robert S. McNamara, the Kennedy-Johnson-era defense secretary, will be most remembered as a man instrumental in sending hundreds of thousands of Americans to fight in Vietnam, and who was haunted by his decision for the rest of his life.

WASHINGTON – Whether it's over health care, climate change or most other big Washington battles this year, Congress keeps debating the same underlying issue: Is the federal government getting too big and intrusive?

WASHINGTON – The Social Security Administration has continued to pay millions of dollars in benefits to dead Americans, and other elderly U.S. residents are at risk of losing badly needed aid because they're improperly recorded as deceased, federal investigators warn in a new report.

Anthony Woods may be a long shot to win a race for Congress, but his presence assures it will be a high-profile affair. It's already resulting in national attention.

California is issuing IOUs and still doesn't have a balanced budget, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Friday that it's far from the worst state in the nation for business.

KABUL, Afghanistan – A U.S. soldier who inexplicably walked off his barren military base earlier this week was captured by Taliban militants hours later, U.S. military officials said Thursday, in what's believed to be the first time insurgents here have captured an American serviceman in the almost eight-year war.

WASHINGTON – When the ousted president of Honduras hit Washington this week demanding a return to power, he got meetings with a White House adviser and a top U.S. diplomat.

WASHINGTON – The Senate health committee's top two Democrats on Thursday rolled out a revamped plan to overhaul health care that is projected to cost less than $600 billion over 10 years, far less than their previous version, but which would impose a tax on many employers.

WASHINGTON – If North Korea fires a missile at Hawaii on or around the July Fourth holiday, as Japanese reports have warned, the U.S. plans a measured response in coordination with Russia, China, Japan and South Korea.

WASHINGTON – The fate of White House and congressional efforts to overhaul the nation's health care system is likely to depend on the price tag, but there's no precise, reliable way to estimate the cost.

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration sent Congress a detailed plan Tuesday to create one of the most ambitious parts of the president's proposed overhaul of financial regulation, a consumer financial protection agency.

WASHINGTON – California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein says she's open to the idea of having the government compete with private companies as a way to help provide health insurance to the nearly 50 million people who lack it.

NIZHNY PANJ, Tajikistan – In August 2007, the presidents of Afghanistan and Tajikistan walked side by side with the U.S. commerce secretary across a new $37 million concrete bridge that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers designed to link two of Central Asia's poorest countries.

WASHINGTON – Despite the strains of sky-high costs and public skepticism, the government is moving steadily toward a vast health care overhaul that would at least partly fulfill a six-decade quest for universal coverage and could rein in soaring costs for everyone else.

WASHINGTON – By a narrow margin, the House of Representatives on Friday took the first legislative step in U.S. history to reduce the heat-trapping gases building up in the atmosphere and gradually shift America to cleaner sources of energy.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama acknowledged Friday that his hopes for a direct U.S.-Iran dialogue, one of his signature foreign policy initiatives, have been dashed for now by the Iranian government's violent quashing of protests over the disputed June 12 election.

WASHINGTON – In a mix of gripping political theater and a financial "whodunnit," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke strenuously denied on Thursday that he strong-armed Bank of America into absorbing troubled investment bank Merrill Lynch against its will.

Senators who are negotiating how to overhaul the nation's health care system broke off formal talks Thursday until after the July Fourth holiday, saying they lack consensus on how to pay for the $1 trillion or more that the changes could cost over the next decade.

WASHINGTON – On the eve of the White House's long-delayed bipartisan meeting today to kick off its drive to revamp U.S. immigration policy, lawmakers and interest groups weighed in Wednesday on what's needed in a comprehensive bill.

WASHINGTON – A key committee in the House of Representatives began breaking down the Obama administration's financial-regulation revamp into separate parts Wednesday, promising to pass the portion that would affect most Americans, a proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency, by the end of July.

WASHINGTON – South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's admission of an affair Wednesday dealt a potentially fatal blow to the political career of a rising Republican star, and it's only the latest stumble of many in the early jockeying to lead the GOP back from oblivion in 2012.

WASHINGTON – In his strongest words yet against Iran, President Barack Obama on Tuesday condemned the country's violent suppression of its people and lauded Iranians who have braved brutality to protest what they believe was a rigged election.

WASHINGTON – A nearly unified Supreme Court on Monday opened an escape valve for political jurisdictions that are seeking relief from anti-discrimination scrutiny, but the justices stopped short of striking down a historic voting-rights law.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama sometimes sounds a lot like George W. Bush, as administration attorneys repeatedly adopt the executive-authority and national-security rationales that their Republican predecessors preferred.

WASHINGTON – As the Obama administration ramps up the Drug Enforcement Administration's presence in Afghanistan, some special-agent pilots contend that they're being illegally forced to go to a combat zone.

Official Washington is all abuzz over honeybees. At the White House, two types of parasite-resistant honeybees developed by U.S. scientists will be delivered to the first family's new garden next month.

WASHINGTON – The Senate passed a resolution Thursday calling on the United States to apologize officially for the enslavement and segregation of millions of African Americans and to acknowledge "the fundamental injustice, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow laws."

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – As Pakistan pursues delicate negotiations before beginning a major military operation in South Waziristan, the United States launched a drone strike Thursday that could offend a warlord the government is trying to win over, analysts said.

WASHINGTON – Even the most hardened partisans agree: Republicans and Democrats must find common ground on overhauling America's health care system, or the effort is likely to fail.

WASHINGTON – Despite President Barack Obama's assurance Tuesday that he won't accept North Korea as a nuclear power, he has few options short of war and may have little choice but to find a way to live with the threat, analysts said.

WASHINGTON – A divided House of Representatives on Tuesday approved by 226-202 a $105.9 billion emergency spending bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and help curb flu outbreaks.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama took his case for a massive overhaul of health care to one of his most skeptical audiences – doctors – and was met with scattered boos when he told them bluntly that he wants to continue allowing patients to sue for and win unlimited amounts in malpractice cases.

Natomas Unified School District trustees voted Thursday to issue at least 80 pink slips to employees, implement a pay-to-play athletic program and eliminate summer school for middle schoolers.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama got elected by promising change, but he's following one time-honored tradition by doling out ambassadorships to friends and big-money party donors.

California journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee – sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for "hostile acts" against North Korea – could be home by the end of the year.

WASHINGTON – Republicans may have a window of opportunity to turn public opinion against President Barack Obama's first Supreme Court nominee, but a new poll finds that such a campaign could hurt their party's already weak standing with Americans, especially Latinos, the nation's fastest-growing voter group.

A major overhaul of the federal government's plans to manage forest lands in California is likely to affect recreation, logging and habitat for a generation to come.